


Domino Recovery Center

by orphan_account



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Anxiety, Asocial Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Eating Disorders, Everyone is kind of screwed up obviously, Long, Mental Health Issues, Mental Hospital AU, Mental Institutions, Multi, PTSD, Rating may go up, Self Harm, Suicide, Suicide Attempts, background chaseshipping, background heart shipping, drug overdose, for shipping purposes, only the bakuras have seperate bodies, will add tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:12:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3808252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joey Wheeler gets a new roommate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domino Recovery Center

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't know, a BHT is a Behavioral Health Technician. They're like nurses except they're less qualified. They sometimes act as orderlies. 
> 
> I have personally been in a mental hospital but only for a very short time, so some of this will be me stretching what I already know as the kids are supposed to have been there for longer than a week. 
> 
> Violence, suicidal ideation and drug overdose mention in this chapter. 
> 
> Unbeta'd.
> 
> Joey has Major depressive disorder with a side of chronic anger. Yugi has dissociative identity disorder.

Joey Wheeler awakes to the heated pounding on his door at seven am by a BHT. He doesn't care to try and figure out which one, because all he hears is,  
"GROUP IN TEN!"

Ugh. Fuck. 

He must have slept later than normal. 

He wipes his blond hair out of his eyes and looks up to see sunlight streaming in the small window. Aah, what a beautiful view of the outside brick wall and five feet of gravel. Truly majestic.

He rolls over to look up at the blank white ceiling, which always starts to look slightly blue if you look at it too long, and wonders how the hell this became his life. 

"Reckless self-endangerment," they said. "You must want to kill yourself," they said. 

Please, if Joey had wanted to kill himself, he could have done it a lot more easily than getting in a fight. He couldn't have known said fight would land him in the hospital with five stitches. 

He looks over and notices that Yugi isn't in his bed, so he must be up already. The blond groans. He does not have the patience for anything today. Or ever. 

After another five minutes of sulking and another BHT coming back to yell at him, he drags himself out of bed, rumpled clothes and all. He walks lazily to the group circle and plops himself in the seat next to Yugi, who is currently tapping his foot like a jackhammer against the floor. 

"How'd you sleep, man?" Joey asks, rubbing his eyes. 

"Nightmares," the teen answers easily, as if him screaming and crying the whole night was such a normal occurrence. Well, it pretty much was for him, in all honesty. 

"Scared the hell out of the technicians," Joey says. "I couldn't tell whether to be proud or annoyed that they kept coming back to check on you every five minutes. I can tune you out but I don't much like hearing them gossip when they leave the door open."

Yugi doesn't say anything, just stares off into space, much like he usually does. Joey sighs, rubbing his face with his hand as Ryou starts to come around with their morning group sheets. A cheerful Téa follows close behind with the pencils, all of which are only about an inch long, with erasers that might as well be little pink rocks, for some reason. Maybe the lack of funding directly affects how often they update their pencil collection.

Joey fumbles with trying to support his paper on his knee as a nurse yells at Tristan for fucking around again. Probably talking too much. 

What is your depression level on a scale from one to ten? 

A fucking 6.567483927, how bout that? What the fuck are number scales?

He starts filling out the form, annoyance growing with each stupid question he arrives at. He's grumpier than usual today. It must be because it's such a sunny fucking day outside. 

My goal for today is: 

My goal for today is to get through the day without fucking strangling anybody, fucking...

Instead, he writes, "to have a good day."

I will achieve this goal by: 

By fucking stopping myself from fucking strangling anybody, for fuck's sake...

But "by using coping skills," seems like a better response. 

He sighs as Téa comes by again to collect the pencils and they all sit down to share their personal morning reports, although Ryou ends up getting yelled at by a nurse for sitting down next to a girl without leaving a space in between them. It's sad because Ryou probably feels a little less shy around the girls because they can be nicer to him sometimes. Especially Téa. 

Not that the staff cares about that, though. 

Joey manages to get through group without, wonderfully, strangling anybody, and then they've only got ten short minutes before glorious breakfast. Those bagels are waiting for him, damn it, but then he gets stopped by a nurse on his way back to his room. 

"We're moving Yugi to another room so we can fit another kid in with you. Think you'll have a problem with that?"

He knows she doesn't want the truth, so he just shakes his head angrily and treks back to his room to see Yugi stripping his bed. 

The boy is quiet as always, pulling up his sheets and rolling everything into one big bedclothes ball. 

"How you doin', Yug'?" Joey asks, Yugi's back turned to him. 

"I'm fine."

"You still Yug'?" Joey asks tentatively. It's not that he cares, because it's really all Yugi, and he gets along with the other guy just as well, but he's still learning how to spot the difference. 

"Ya, it's still me, Joey," the boy replies, sighing softly. He bundles the linens up into his arms and gives Joey a pained smile as he walks out of the room, leaving the blond to stare out the stupid desolate window. 

He kicks the corner of his bed, only for pain to bloom over his foot as he reminds himself that it's bolted in to the ground, it's not like it's going to have much give when he rams his stupid frustrated foot against it.

It's not just that there's a good chance his new roommate will be an asshole, because there is, and it isn't even just the simple fact that he'll miss Yugi. While that's true, he also worries about how a less tolerant person (seemly impossible, but still) will put up with Yugi's... Habits. He feels an instinct to protect the kid, especially since the younger boy was kind enough to show him the ropes when Joey first got to the Domino Recovery Center. You stick with those kinds of people. You stay loyal.

This is one of the richer places, in a wealthier part of town, but apparently not rich enough for the patients to be treated like fucking human beings. Most people in the ward like to go crazy (no joke intended) over the new arrivals; even though most of the time it's just another bratty kid who overdosed on daddy's vike. Maybe that's why they're so rude. They still can't get the taste of charcoal out of their mouth. Makes them grumpy.

Although maybe Joey doesn't have much room to talk.


End file.
